Chinese studio Paper Games just announced a new open-world action game called Project The Perceiver, developed by internal sub-studio 17ZHE. It’s certainly a surprise announcement, as Paper Games is very well-known for producing the popular dress-up game Shining Nikki and the Nikki Up2U series.
From the trailer, it looks like Project The Perceiver is set in a fantasy historical era with Dark Souls-inspired combat. According to an official description, players will also meet a lot of different characters against a backdrop of turbulent unrest, understand and transform their ideals into masks, and also participate in violent duels.
In the trailer, a character dies and after reviving, receives a “blank mask.” The official Project The Perceiver website reveals only two characters so far, the “Mask of Devotion” (the main character in the trailer wearing white) and “Mask of Umbra,” who appears to be a guy you can fight in the trailer.
Project The Perceiver has no release date set yet. So far it’s confirmed for PlayStation, and other platforms are unannounced.
There seems to be a trend of open-world Dark Souls-inspired action games set in loosely historical fantasy settings from Chinese studios, such as, Black Myth Wukong. It remains to be seen if Paper Games can crack an entirely different genre from its usual fare, though if Love Nikki’s narrative arcs (Blood curses! War!) and Shining Nikki’s 3D models are anything to go by–we should have high expectations.
